Established as a landmark victory for the climate movement, the CCC promised to hold governments to account. Today, it is understating the danger of climate chaos and impeding the radical action needed, says IAN SINCLAIR
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Whither proletarian revolution – it’s coming home
Lenin’s theory of the weakest link shifted the centre of gravity of the proletarian revolution towards peoples’ struggles in the developing world, contrary to the expectation of Marx and Engels. The effect was to hinder the cause of socialism by decades. Time bring it back to its natural home, argues FAWZI IBRAHIM
IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST:
Thousands of protesters march
against the excesses of
capitalism in London, 2009
The real ‘humanitarian threat’ isn’t Cuba but the United States, where poverty, lack of healthcare and illiteracy abound, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
ROGER McKENZIE draws attention to the much-neglected oral traditions of the global South that define the identity – and therefore the liberation – of its custodians
Labour movement history in Britain shows workers secured reforms through collective pressure and political representation, rather than being gifted from above, writes KEITH FLETT
CLAUDIA WEBBE looks at how Britain’s Nato ally has upped the stakes in its effort to silence domestic dissenting voices
IT WAS the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 and, subsequently, Capital in 1867 that explained that, as capitalism was born within its predecessor, the feudal system, so it is with socialism — it is born within the capitalist system.
As capitalism evolved, its productive force would come into conflict with its relations of production, and at an advanced stage of its development, proletarian revolution would overthrow the capitalist order and establish socialism.
Communists thus looked to the advanced industrial countries in Europe for such revolutions and they were not disappointed with workers’ rebellions and revolutions that took place across Europe in the early and mid-19th century. There were the Luddites, 1811-13, the Merthyr Tydfil armed insurrection in 1831, the Swing Riots in 1830 by agricultural workers in southern and eastern England, and of course the European revolutions of 1848.
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